Understanding Older Age

As the number of older people increases in our society and with it the expectation that we might all enjoy some measure of longevity part of the work of the Centre for Human Flourishing is to explore what frameworks might best help us to understand age and so befriend ageing for our well-being and wholeness.

James Woodward has gathered below a number of resources that may assist individuals and groups in thinking through the nature of worship with, alongside and for older people. These resources are gathered in part from his work as Director of the Leveson Centre for the Study of Ageing, Spirituality and Social Policy from 2000 to 2009 (www.leveson.org.uk).

What the best space and place might be for us within which to age is the subject matter of Malcolm Johnson’s paper Committed to the Asylum? The Long Term Care of Older People. Professor Johnson offers us an opportunity to consider the future of long-term care for older people. Although delivered in 2002 his response to the undermining of the institutional care of frail and vulnerable older people remains a persistent challenge for health and social care. He offers us a challenge in arguing that the case for abandoning institutional care is poorly thought out and against all of the evidence. He asks us to reconstruct our thinking about institutions and put them back in the valued spectrum of human living arrangements.

In the paper The Policy Challenges of Population Ageing Kenneth Howse offers his reader a careful analysis of the implications of an ageing population on a range of policies. It is a carefully researched and meticulously written paper that deserves careful reading.